Too Late
by Thranduilseyebrows
Summary: Gabriel died trying to stop the apocalypse, and when he did, something inside Sam broke and he came to a realisation too late. One night, Gabriel appears out of nowhere - but is it really him? Or is Sam's mind finally breaking and his insanity getting the better of him? (SABRIEL) Warnings: depression and self harm


**A / N:**I don't own any of the characters, blah, blah, blah. Because, let's be honest, if I did own them destiel and sabriel would be canon and they're not... *distant crying*

Two years. Two years since Gabriel had died, facing his family and trying to stop the annihilation of the world. Sam swirled the golden brown mixture around the glass. _Just like the colour of his eyes… _Sam stopped rotating the glass and angrily slammed it down onto the kitchen table of his most recent hotel. He rested his elbows on the table, allowing his head to fall into his hands, running them over his face while squeezing his eyes as tightly shut as possible. After Gabriel died, Sam tried to suppress his emotions. His anger, his confusion. But he knew that deep down inside of him, something had broken. A piece had been ripped out of place, causing the eventual landslide of everything else, and Dean noticed it. The more subtle things at first, like the way Sam would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, and would hardly ever get more than a few hours' sleep. And, eventually, the more obvious things like the way that Sam would constantly be sick, yet still managing to drag himself out to pubs to drown his emotions with alcohol. He stopped helping Dean on hunts, he hardly ever slept, and he barely ate anything. After Dean fully caught-on to the scale of really just how badly Sam was doing, he realised that he would have to eventually confront him. That next evening Dean was sitting in the kitchen eating some takeout he'd gone and picked up, when he caught Sam walking through to his room, and decided to try to start up a convocation.

"Hey Sam," Dean raised a burger up and wiggled it in the air in an attempt to make it appear more enticing, "Want some takeout?"

Sam weakly shook his head and ran his fingers through his messy, unwashed hair. "Um, no I'm not hungry…" He turned back to the corridor and began to head towards his room.

Dean wasn't going to let the opportunity pass by. "Sam, wait. Can we, um, talk for a second?" Sam turned back to Dean and heavily sighed, before reluctantly walking over to the table and pulling out a seat. Dean scanned over his face, and was shocked to see just how bad Sam was looking. His eyes were slightly blood-shot and were buried beneath puffy eyelids, encompassed in deep, purple bags. His body was slumped over the chair, and he seemed to be wearing the same top that he'd had on for the past week or possibly even longer.

"Sam, I…" Dean cleared his throat as he tried to focus on his words, rather than Sam's weak appearance. "What's up with you, man?"

Sam immediately turned away and answered with a quick "Nothing", still not wanting to make eye contact.

"Well obviously it's not 'nothing' is it?" Sam still avoided Dean's gaze. "Sammy, look at me…"

Sam's eyes reluctantly travelled up Dean's body and met his brother's eyes. Dean's face was full of concern, and he dropped his voice as he asked, "This isn't about Gabriel is it?"

"I- I'm going to bed…" And with that, Sam quickly pushed his chair back and headed towards his room without looking back.

That was only the first time that Dean tried to confront Sam. Every time Sam would just coil in on himself and try to block Dean out even more. Eventually it got too hard for Sam to deal with – he felt like he needed space to grieve and time to block out the world and forget about the chores of daily life. It was just too hard with Dean constantly pestering him. Trying to get him to sleep more, and eat more regularly, and bringing up Gabriel. Every time Sam heard his name, the thread that was keeping everything together began to slowly unravel.

So one day, he left. He packed his bags and hitch-hiked a ride to the neighbouring state where he got a room in the least-known hotel he could find. He stayed in contact with Dean through the occasional text message, letting him know that he was alright but never letting him know where he was staying. Sam would move to different hotels every few days. The idea of staying in one place made him go crazy and only brought up bad thoughts. Sam thought that moving away from Dean and secluding himself from the rest of the world would give him a chance to relax and recover, but he wasn't sure that it was working. The nightmares were just getting worse – he'd wake up every night screaming – and the only way he could get a full night's sleep was by drinking enough alcohol to knock himself out.

This is why he found himself sitting at the table of his latest hotel room, surrounded by a sea of empty bottles. He looked angrily at the glass of whiskey he'd just slammed into the table, lifted it to his mouth, and downed it in one go. After a glass or two more, he groggily began to let his legs carry him to his bed where he proceeded to collapse into the sheets. _Where did this all go wrong? _He thought to himself while waiting for sleep to overcome him, _Why did I only realise that I loved him when it was too late… _

The same questions Sam asked himself each night before losing a grasp on the world of consciousness. _Why did he have to do it? Why wasn't I there to save him…_

Sam had tried praying to Gabriel. In case he somehow was tuning in to Angel Radio and could hear his voice. At the start he prayed to try to get an answer or response. When he never received one, he continued to pray anyway. He was never really sure why, maybe just to keep himself sane as he had no one else to talk to. Sometimes, when he was getting bad, he'd pray to him and beg for an answer. He'd break down and tell him he was sorry for not being able to save him and that he loved him, yet he still never got an answer.

Eventually sleep overtook him, and dragged him into a world of darkness and nightmares. He was standing in the same room as Gabriel, watching him die in hundreds of different ways, but never being able to move or do anything, screaming with no noise coming out. All while this was happening there was the voiceover from the video Gabriel had left them, set on repeat as Sam watch Gabriel die over and over again. _"If you're watching this – I'm dead… If you're watching this – I'm dead… If you're watching this – I'm dead…"_ Over and over, until Sam finally woke up screaming with tears coating his face. He curled up in the corner of the bed with his back against the wall sobbing, when suddenly he heard a noise and a felt a sudden weight on the mattress. He pulled his tear stained face out of his hands and looked up to see himself staring directly at Gabriel, who was sitting on the other end of the bed. Gabriel smiled weakly and whispered, "Oh Sammy… What happened to you…"

Sam suddenly burst, "STOP! I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" And returned his head back to his arms where he began to cry harder.

Gabriel was extremely taken aback by Sam's sudden outburst and whispered, "… Take what anymore?"

"THIS!" Sam gestured wildly in the air, "YOU! I KNOW YOU'RE NOT REAL! I…" His voice dropped, "I just can't do it anymore…"

"Sam – look at me…" Sam kept his head buried in his arms, not wanting to give into whatever games his mind was playing on him. "I'm real… I promise – it's really me, Gabriel…"

Sam lifted his head from his arms and whispered in a hardly audible tone, "That's what you always say…"

Gabriel leant forward and grabbed Sam's hands in his, and Sam immediately gasped and pulled his arms away. "You- I… I've never been able to touch you, before…" The look of shock on Sam's face showed that he was actually considering that this might actually be real.

Gabriel smiled and took Sam's hands in his and whispered, "That's because it's really me." He ran his fingers across Sam's hands and down his wrists, when he suddenly stopped short and flipped his arms over to reveal thick and bloodied cuts running horizontally down Sam's arms. Gabriel felt a pang of guilt and groaned as he said, "Sam… What have you done to yourself?" He reached up to brush away a stray tear from Sam's face, when Sam reached up and grabbed his hand.

"What- How-," He cleared his throat trying to find his voice again, "How did you survive?"

Gabriel sighed and looked away from Sam. "It's, um, complicated…" Sam didn't say anything, and Gabriel could tell that that was his way of asking him to continue. "I didn't really die – Well, I did, but they were able to save me – to patch my grace back together – up in heaven."

Sam was giving Gabriel the death stare, his fists tightened and his jaw clenched together. He hadn't really listened past the "I didn't really die" part, and was fuming. "What do you mean 'you didn't really die'?" He was trying to stay calm, but he couldn't hold it for long, "Do you mean you LEFT ME here, thinking you were DEAD, WHILE YOU GALIVANTED AROUND IN HEAVEN?!"

Gabriel tried to interject, "Sam, I-"

"DON'T YOU 'SAM' ME! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THIS HAS DONE TO ME?! IT RUINED ME GABRIEL, IT BROKE ME. AND ALL BECAUSE BY THE TIME I REALISED THAT I LOVED YOU, IT WAS TOO LATE." Sam was slightly shocked that all of that had poured out of his mouth, and he was wishing he could take some of it back.

Gabriel was letting everything Sam had just said settle in, when he quietly said, "… I heard you"

"Heard me what?" Sam said slightly bitterly.

"Praying…"

Sam was going to say something, when he started to think over all the things he'd ever said to Gabriel when praying, and decided that it would probably be better if he kept his mouth shut.

"I heard every single prayer. And I didn't ignore you," Gabriel hastily added, "I just couldn't respond – I wasn't strong enough to come down to Earth, my grace was still repairing. This is my first trip down to Earth since I died."

"And you chose you come here and see me…"

Gabriel quietly laughed before saying, "Don't get full of yourself now, Samsquatch."

Sam smiled at the nickname Gabriel had given him, before deeply yawning. Gabriel suddenly looked concerned again. "When was the last time you had a full-night's sleep?"

"Uh, I can't remember…" Sam smiled feebly in Gabriel's direction.

"I could always, um…" Gabriel lifted up his hand to imply that he could always use his angel-mojo to knock Sam out so he could get a few decent hours sleep. Now that Sam was considering it, he'd do almost anything to be able to have a full, nightmare-free rest.

Sam sighed before saying, "Sure, why not?"

Gabriel smiled and began to lift his hand to his forehead, when Sam grabbed his arm. "Promise that you'll still be here when I wake up?" Sam's voiced wavered and he sounded small and afraid like a child not wanting to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.

Gabriel snickered, "I did just come all the way down to Earth for you Sam."

Sam laughed and said, "Okay, okay. I was just checking," before falling into a deep and pleasant sleep.

Sam woke up the next morning and stretched while smiling, thinking back on the previous night's convocation. Suddenly his smiled dropped as his eyes desperately scanned around the room, hoping to spot Gabriel. When they didn't Sam began to become frantic, wondering if last night had even happened at all. He had drunk a lot of alcohol… He must have been dreaming – it really was too good to be true. And again, he had let Gabriel go before he even could straight-out (and intentionally) tell him how much he meant to him. That he loved him.

Just as he had begun to convince himself that he must have dreamt the entire scenario, he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. He walked out the hotel bedroom and down to the kitchen, where he saw Gabriel swearing at a bowl of brown mixture and an overflowing, bubbling fry-pan. Gabriel heard him walk in, and turned around and smiled. "Ah, Samsquatch. I tried making chocolate pancakes you see, but I tried to actually _make _the mixture and _cook _them instead of just clicking and them appearing because I thought about the whole 'it's the thought that cou-"

Sam walked straight over to Gabriel and kissed him. At first Gabriel didn't respond, too shocked after being cut off mid-sentence, but eventually he wrapped his arms around Sam's waist and leant into the kiss. After a few minutes, Sam broke the kiss and smiled down at Gabriel, "I love you if you didn't get that."

Gabriel laughed and said in a tone of false humility, "I know you do."

Sam laughed and playfully pushed Gabriel. "What about those pancakes you were making?"

Gabriel sighed impatiently and said, "Screw the pancakes", before pushing Sam up against the kitchen wall, wrapping his arms around his neck and bringing him down for another kiss.

**A / N:**Yay! Happy endings and sabriel kisses :3 All reviews and comments are welcome (and encouraged *prods you with a stick*)


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